


Loud and Unnoticed, He Smiled

by bbcsherlockian



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Break Up, M/M, Memories, Non-Linear Narrative, expressionist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 14:28:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3137702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbcsherlockian/pseuds/bbcsherlockian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's one 'Hello' and one 'Goodbye' and it's all the bits in between that he can't remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loud and Unnoticed, He Smiled

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, it's weird and yes, I'm unapologetic.

There’s a figure in a room. He stands and his body is vulnerable with age. His posture sharp. He is looking at a photograph. There is sunlight streaming in from the windows but - that too - is lazily dying. In the photograph there is a man. 

Immediately before the photograph had been taken the man had said Smile, Sherlock. 

A time before the photograph the man had said Hello.

A time after the photograph the man had said I’ll always be here. And the man had said Maybe you should hold my hand. And the man had said This is it, then. The man had said these things not necessarily in this order. 

Many things happened and were said in between. Whispered as lightly as the prayers sewn between the fibres of a moth’s wing in the hope that she will find her way home. Like trees in August that are loud and unnoticed. It is Autumn now. 

Before the photograph and some time before the Before he had considered speed and action and adrenaline and efficiency and thinking too quickly to be. To be. Assets. 

The Spring of all their years had been golden. Transcendent. Utterly untouched. Utterly unnoticed. 

He’d said You only appreciate things when they go.

He had been right. 

The photograph catches in the light and it becomes marred with distortion. Where do his fingers end, He thinks. Where has his face gone,

There is no such thing as a right moment and soulmates do not exist. There is no such thing as a right moment and soulmates do not exist. There is no such thing as a right moment and soulmates do not exist. 

And yet.

He’d said I’ve been here before and we hired a boat. 

He’d said I love you.

He’d said You’ll never remember this. 

The chronology is not important. The chronology is never important until it very immediately and distractingly and painfully is. 

He’d said Sometimes I wish I had spent my childhood with you but then I realise that we wouldn’t be the same. 

They had gone to a park and sat on a bench and he had kissed him in front of all the ducks. It had been very pedestrian. 

There is no such thing as a right moment. 

Let me hold you, he had said. I can’t breathe:

I can’t breathe because of you.

Everything is out of place and running too fast like a loop of string tied in knots and threaded between someone’s fingers. 

Like a year told in broken narratives. 

I love you. He remembers it and it didn’t matter all that much because he already knew there were no right moments and no right words and no right people. 

He’d said You’re impossible and in the same breath some four years later he’d said Let me take you to Scotland. 

And then

Where are you taking me where are you taking this .,

Suddenly halted,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, it’s. 

He places the photograph back onto the desk. The curtains are creased in this way permanently because they are never closed. He looks at his blurred reflection from the black outside. Never crisp. He doesn’t see. 

You can have your bees, He’d said. Look in this corner we could grow rhododendrons.

He thinks of the man asleep upstairs. It is the same man in the photograph. This man is not really upstairs but he was. 

Look we could put the sofa here

and

Look this is where we will build our lives together

and

Look the letterbox will need to be fixed

and

Look at me, look at me, He had said You never look at me anymore and when you do you only see right through

and 

Look there’s no place to keep the mugs. 

The air became grey and sometimes excruciatingly white. 

He leaves the room and goes upstairs. He goes upstairs to where the man most decidedly is not. The photograph remains on the desk-top and the man is smiling out at nothing in particular. He is not smiling although he was told to. 

He’d said It’s four o’clock in the morning come upstairs to bed. 

Many things had been said before the photograph had been taken. A time after the photograph the man had said There has never been a better time And the man had said I’ll always be here.

Come upstairs,,,,,

Come upstairs it’s four o’clock

I’ll always be here Come upstairs Come upstairs to bed

There is no such thing as a right moment and soulmates do not exist.

There is no such thing as a

He’d said Fuck you And he’d said I’ll always be

I’ll always be here And he’d

said Don’t text me or call me or doing anything

stupid. So the photograph is shut away and every so often it catches the light. 

Yes, He replies at last and it has taken him too long

Yes. I’m coming. I hope you’re still awake. I’m coming upstairs to bed


End file.
